The Autobiography of Mycroft Holmes

Chapter 26: Tower Bridge

Later that night at about 7:45, Detective Inspector Lestrade and I walked up to Tower Bridge. The 20 members of the Police Force that we had brought with us were stashed in various locations around the bridge, ready to shoot the murderer when he made a move at us.

Some of the best killers in the Force, these officers were specially picked by us for their excellent skill. They were behind assassinations, planned invasions, and many other matters that were covered up by New Scotland Yard at some point or another that I am absolutely not allowed to mention in this Autobiography.

When we reached the middle of the bridge, we looked around. The murderer was nowhere to be seen.

"Do you remember what this guy looks like, Mycroft? The last time you saw him was over a year and a half ago."

"I know what he looks like. That's not what you should be worrying about right now. What your mind should be preoccupied with right now is the imminent attack that will probably be attempted upon us."

"I'm not sure there is even going to be an attack, Mycroft," Lestrade said. "He's not here."

I peered at my watch. 8:03 P.M. For a very punctual murderer as he, it was hard to believe that he could be late to such a meeting.

"He might be late. Give him a little bit of time. He'll show his face eventually. He has to. I know it."

"Mycroft, I don't do field work anymore so I need to get back to my office if we don't find anything very soon."

"He has to be here somewhere."

"Maybe he knows the officers are here and he knows he can't trap us somewhere."

"A trap... It might just be," I conceded.

"A trap? Okay, like I said, this guy can't trap us with all these officers around." Lestrade reminded me. "You've been studying the murderer for a while, what do you think?"

"Where are the officers?" I asked, absent-mindedly. I had been looking around for a few minutes, and now the officers were nowhere to be seen as well. "I no longer see the men stationed on the ramparts of this building!" I asked Lestrade, pointing to a building on the waterfront.

"Probably searching. Maybe they found him?" Lestrade mused.

That was when those men, and a few of the other officers, began to fire on us.

Lestrade yelled for me to get down. "Cease fire, do you hear me? Cease fire!" Lestrade yelled at the men. But they did not stop.

"Abandon the bridge!" I yelled to Lestrade over the sound of bullets missing their mark and hitting the cement around us.

We ran off the bridge, crouched low. We ran into a dark, presumably abandoned building at the waterfront; the one that the men were supposed to be stationed on but now did not occupy.

"What in bloody hell was that?" Lestrade yelled when we got into the building, which was completely dark except for the light coming in from the door.

But before I could respond, all the lights on the ceiling of the empty room that we were standing in turned on, and some began to blow out. It seemed like an office space, with cubicles all around and desks scattered. The lamplights on the desks turned on as well, a few of them blowing out from the power of the electricity.

"Hey! What is this?" Lestrade yelled into the lit room.

"The murderer isn't in this room," I said. I now began to further evaluate the mental state of the killer. He was eccentric, almost theatrical, and likely a medical Psychopath, unlike Sherlock and I.

"Maybe he's in the back rooms," I said, seeing a set of doors that led into a conference room.

Lestrade drew a gun that she had in her back pocket. She always used to carry one in the same location in her days of more extensive field work, but I hadn't seen her with it recently.

We walked up to the area slowly, before the lights around that area went dark. This was an office space that had not been used in years, it seemed. I motioned for Lestrade to break the door off its hinges, and she did. She walked in, pistol drawn, and then stood up straight.

She held her arms out, as if to ask what was going on again. Then, she dropped the gun. Something was obviously wrong.

"I don't get it," she said as I proceeded to placidly walk into the room, which was filled with our officers pointing guns at us and standing around the murderer himself.

"Like the way I did it?" he asked us.

*CLIFFHANGER!!! Who do you think the murderer is? Thanks for reading :)